


The Pathology of TV's Most Popular Cannibal: Why Hannibal Could Never Have Knowingly Cannibalized His Sister

by BisexualHannibalLecter



Category: Hannibal (TV), Hannibal Lecter Series - All Media Types, Hannibal Lecter Tetralogy - Thomas Harris
Genre: Cannibalism, Childhood Trauma, Gen, Headcanon, Meta, Murder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-06
Updated: 2020-06-06
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:01:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24579466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BisexualHannibalLecter/pseuds/BisexualHannibalLecter
Summary: A meta essay regarding the TV adaptation and characterization of Hannibal in contrast to the books and movies, specifically regarding his motivations for his cannibalistic behavior.
Relationships: Hannibal Lecter & Mischa Lecter, Will Graham & Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 8
Kudos: 28





	The Pathology of TV's Most Popular Cannibal: Why Hannibal Could Never Have Knowingly Cannibalized His Sister

**Author's Note:**

> You may have read this when it was originally posted. I took it down because some people made me feel very bad about having written it, but I've decided to re-post it, because I put too much work into writing it for a few people to ruin it for me.

In NBC’s _Hannibal_ , the title character is confirmed mid-way through season 3 to have knowingly cannibalized his sister, Mischa Lecter, by his own admission. This directly goes against the plot of both the original book series and the movies based off of them, in which Hannibal’s cannibalization of his sister was entirely without his knowledge until many years later. I am unsure why Bryan Fuller made this change when developing his show’s plot, but I am here to argue that this plot point does not make sense whatsoever for Hannibal’s character, regardless of which form of media you’re discussing. Whether it’s book Hannibal, movie Hannibal, or TV Hannibal, he never would have knowingly and intentionally eaten his sister, and here’s why.

First and foremost, let’s examine Hannibal’s backstory and motivations in the original book series, as well as their big screen follow-ups. Our best and most detailed understanding of Hannibal’s past comes from Thomas Harris’s fourth and final Hannibal novel, _Hannibal Rising_ , and the movie released under the same name. In the plot of both pieces of media, Hannibal and his family run away from Castle Lecter and hide in their family lodge in the woods during Nazi Germany’s occupation of Lithuania. At the time of fleeing, in 1941, Hannibal was 8 years old, and Mischa would have been 2 years old. When the Nazis eventually vacated Lithuania, a Soviet tank stopped by the Lecter family lodge demanding water, and was bombed by Nazis. Hannibal’s family, various people working for the family, and everyone in the Soviet tank was killed in the blast except for Hannibal himself and his baby sister, Mischa. 

A Nazi collaborator by the name of Vladis Grutas, leading four other Lithuanian men, stormed the damaged lodge to loot it for food and valuables, and found Hannibal and Mischa, whom they held captive. After finding no food, Grutas murdered Mischa so that his group could cannibalize her. Hannibal was later fed broth by the soldiers, unbeknownst to the fact that it had been made with Mischa’s remains. While the act of having killed and eaten Mischa was Hannibal’s initial catalyst for seeking a gruesome revenge, his murder of Vladis Grutas is arguably the most brutal, as it directly followed Grutas taunting Hannibal by telling him Mischa’s remains had been in the broth. Grutas insinuates that Hannibal knew this all along and was only killing Grutas and his group to keep it a secret. Hannibal is understandably enraged by this revelation and murders Grutas slowly and painfully by carving the letter M into his chest over and over until he dies.

Between the instance of his captivity and his revenge on Grutas and his men, Hannibal’s pathology as a killer is developed. In both book and movie, Hannibal is left incredibly traumatized by his sister’s murder. He loses his faith in God and justice, and develops a very depressed and cynical view of the world and the people in it. He comes to believe that those who are rude or harmful, especially to those he loves, are no better than pigs and deserve to be treated as such. This is where his decision to cannibalize his victims comes from. He commits his first murder as a teen, killing a butcher who insulted his aunt, cutting out the man’s cheeks, and eating them. It is during this point in the story for both book Hannibal and movie Hannibal that Hannibal pathology of “eating the rude” is fully cemented.

Now, with this pathology considered, it would make absolutely no sense for Hannibal to cannibalize someone out of love, grief, or respect. He has shown that he purely eats people that he sees as pigs— entirely below himself mentally and socially. In the show, however, he is stated to have eaten his sister to honor and mourn her, and implied to desire to eat Will out of love and respect. This would make sense if Hannibal’s pathology in the show was different from his pathology in the original books and movies. The problem here is that his pathology is exactly the same. 

TV Hannibal’s pathology matching book and movie Hannibal’s pathology is best illustrated in the seventh episode of the first season, _Sorbet_. In this episode, there are two very important scenes that contribute to our understanding of the pathology of the Chesapeake Ripper, a.k.a. Hannibal Lecter. The first scene takes place just before the episode’s introduction sequence, in which Will is lecturing a class of FBI Academy students on the Ripper murders. Throughout each episode, we see that Will’s understanding of serial killers what motivates them is always spot-on, so this observation is treated no different than his others. What lends more weight and credibility to this observation is that Will has spent more time studying the Chesapeake Ripper case longer than any of the others he has worked on up to this point. He has more time to get into the Ripper’s head and analyze his crimes and motives.

Later in that same episode, Will misses his appointment with Hannibal, causing Hannibal to go looking for Will. Hannibal finds Will asleep in his classroom, and after a brief exchange, they move on to the photographs of Ripper murders scattered across Will’s desk. In this scene, Hannibal gives Will what appears to be a possible interpretation of the killer’s motivations from an observant psychiatrist, but what we as the viewers know to be an explanation or confession of sorts, because we, unlike Will, are fully aware of Hannibal’s secret identity.

Another issue with the theory that Hannibal cannibalized his sister to mourn her, or because he loved her, is that he never did the same to Abigail, despite citing that Abigail reminded him of Mischa in the eleventh episode of the second season, _Kō No Mono_. In the third episode of the third season, _Secondo_ , Hannibal and Bedelia further discuss Hannibal’s deep familial love for Mischa, which one can assume he also felt for Abigail to some degree. Hannibal cared for Abigail deeply, just as he cared for Mischa, and regarded both girls as daughter figures in a way. Had Hannibal truly eaten Mischa out of love or grief, he would have treated Abigail the same way.

My final point in regards to this subject is the fact that, with one on-screen exception, Hannibal only eats people he himself has killed (or plans to kill, in the case of Abel Gideon.) The single exception we see to this rule is in the tenth episode of the second season, _Naka-Choko_ , when Will presents Hannibal with a piece of Freddie Lounds’s body (later revealed to be Randall Tier’s body) and Hannibal prepares a meal for the two of them from that. This shows just how deep Hannibal’s bond and sense of trust with Will go, as he is willing to relinquish complete control of who he eats over to Will for this one occasion. This is compounded by Hannibal's line in the series premiere, _Apéritif_ , in which he says, “I’m very careful about what I put into my body.” While this line is often read as yet another one of Hannibal’s cannibalism jokes, it also serves to back up the idea that Hannibal preparing a meal with meat from someone he did not kill, and did not witness the killing of, would certainly require a great deal of trust, and even emotional intimacy between Hannibal and the other party.

In conclusion, Hannibal Lecter knowingly and intentionally cannibalizing his sister does not align with his pathology as a cannibal. He loves her deeply, and he does not eat those he loves. He also does not eat those who have been killed by others he is not especially close to. Hannibal sees the people he eats as animals, not people, and he never held such disdain or contempt for Mischa. While everyone is certainly welcome and entitled to their own opinions and interpretations, the evidence across all Hannibal media types points to the very point I have laid out in this essay.

**Author's Note:**

> This is simply about my own headcanons and interpretations of the material. I, of course, explore different angles and possibilities when the narrative suits, but I greatly prefer this version of events and find it to, in some ways, be more fitting to the show's plot than what it was changed to.
> 
> If you liked this, please leave a kudos! Comments are super appreciated! If you want to find/follow/friend me on other platforms, here are my usernames! Don’t be shy! 
> 
> @bisexywill on Tumblr (Main Blog)  
> @bisexual-hannibal-lecter on Tumblr (Writing Blog)  
> @bisexywill on Twitter (Writing Updates & Stuff)  
> @baby mongoose#6953 on Discord


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